


put our best foot forward

by tkreyesevandiaz



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Coda?, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Episode: s03e11 Seize the Day, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Anxiety, Mentions of Cancer, Nightmares, Protective Evan "Buck" Buckley, Worried Evan "Buck" Buckley, maybe? - Freeform, mentions of dying, mentions of original characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23189047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkreyesevandiaz/pseuds/tkreyesevandiaz
Summary: "I didn't know where else to go"
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & May Grant (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 284





	put our best foot forward

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So. I wrote this fic in less than 20 minutes so forgive any mistakes.
> 
> Unbeta'd but hopefully grammatically correct lol.
> 
> Buck and May would have such an amazing sibling-esque relationship and I stand by this!

Buck woke up on a gasp, not knowing what had dragged him out of his slumber. 

There was a sound echoing through his apartment. He reached blindly for his phone, looking for a call or text from Eddie. It was usually only ever Eddie who’d call at this hour of the night, because Christopher had a nightmare. 

When his phone showed with nothing that would incite this type of wake up call, he turned his attention to the rest of his apartment. 

He jumped straight out of bed when he realized that it was insistent knocking on the front door. It wasn’t loud, per say, but there was enough fear and panic in the sound to send Buck’s heart into a frenzied rhythm. 

He stumbled down the steps, noting that it was 2:30 in the morning and he’d been asleep for a little more than three hours. 

The surprise that met him when he flung upon his door wasn’t something that he’d ever thought would show up at his door this late. 

May. 

The teenage girl was standing there, breathing hard. Her eyes shone a little too brightly in the light of the hallway and she looked pained. She was shivering as she looked at him blankly. He didn't know how she'd gotten herself over here.

“May?” Buck immediately led her inside, his mind racing with every possibility that could’ve landed her on his doorstep at nearly three in the morning. 

“I didn’t know where else to go.” Her words were choked, high-strung with some unknown fear. 

Distantly, he knew he had to call Athena, Bobby or Michael but right now, his priority was the girl he’d come to view as his little sister.

Buck sat her down on the couch and turned on a lamp, noting her body shaking. He quickly prepared a hot mug of caffeine-free tea and pressed it into her trembling hands, hoping the hot liquid would ground her. 

“Buck, I didn’t know where else to go.” May looked at him fearfully as she repeated the words, hands shaking around the mug. Vulnerable in the dim light, May looked far younger than her 18, panicked and unsure. Instantly, every protective urge he had pushed out. 

“It’s okay, hon. You are always welcome here.” Buck took inventory of her, finding no visible bruises or signs of struggle. “Are you hurt anywhere?” he approached her carefully, kneeling down in front of her to make himself smaller. 

May shook her head, sending relief through him. “I had a nightmare.”

“About?” he prodded gently, making sure to keep his voice free at the relief that there was no third-party. But Buck was no stranger to nightmares. He’d woken up tangled in his sheets with nothing but roaring water taking him back under, the crashing of debris against his already-battered body and the soul-shattering fear that’d overtaken him when Christopher fell off the truck. He'd woken up pinned under a truck, but this time, he didn't get out. He relived those exact moments over and over again, sometimes waking up shaking in Eddie's arms, sometimes waking up alone frantically searching his entire apartment for any sign of Christopher.

“Dad’s going to die, isn’t he?” May’s eyes teared up as she looked at Buck, searching for answers he didn’t have. 

Michael’s tumor had put a strain on May and Harry most of all, but it’d impacted all the children. Even Denny and Christopher were worried about their Uncle Michael. But out of the four kids, May was the only one who understood the severity of the tumor better than anyone else. He’d been privy to watching the girl research countless after countless books for any clue on how to help her dad. He knew because he’d done the exact same thing with Bobby’s radiation poisoning. The pair of them had sat together to research the radiation poisoning, and then to look into brain tumors. Buck had witnessed the inner strength that May undoubtedly got from her mother, but he knew better than most that everyone broke at one point.

“Why do you think he’s going to die?” Buck asked instead of answering the question. 

“Because he refused to get brain surgery. We had a talk the other day after I saw him preparing his will, and he interpreted my words into thinking that he could just cancel his surgery.”

This was news to Buck. Bobby hadn’t told them that Michael had cancelled his surgery; last time Buck had spoken to him, he'd been adamant on having the surgery. 

May saw this surprise on his face. “See, even you didn’t know.” Her words choked up again, going breathless the way that people did right when they were about to cry. A restless tremor set up shop in her body as she came down from the paralyzing fear of her nightmare.

Buck stayed quiet, instead moving to sit on the couch and pull the girl into his arms. She fell right onto him, now sobbing freely against him. Her distressed, ragged breathing made Buck’s heart hurt. He didn’t know what it was like to lose a parent to an invisible evil like cancer, or to a tumor that was a major risk to operate on. His fear with Bobby’s radiation poisoning wasn’t even an iota of May’s pain now, even if he saw Bobby as his father figure or Michael as his friend.

“May, I can’t tell you if Michael’s going to die or if he should’ve cancelled the surgery or not,” he said once she’d quieted down a little. “No one has any way of knowing. All we can do is put our best foot forward and be patient." 

“When you were stuck under that firetruck, did you think you were going to die?” May whispered hesitantly. Despite her soft tone, the words still hit Buck hard. His breath siphoned out of his lungs, right along his voice as he was thrown right back into that scene. 

He remembered watching a young boy hold the trigger to Buck’s life in his hands, watched through hazy eyes as the fear on Eddie and Hen’s faces grew. He’d watched Chim and Bobby put themselves in the line of fire. He'd seen Athena barking orders into her radio. 

“For a while, yes.” The truth hurt, even nearly a year after the fact. "But to be honest, I was in so much agony over my leg that there wasn’t any time to think of anything else save for going unconscious. But then I saw Bobby, Chimney, Hen, Eddie...Athena. All of them were lined up, ready to jump in and risk their lives just to save me. In that moment, I knew that I had to fight against anything that was going to pull me under, down to where I couldn't crawl back from.

“Then I woke up in that bed, not knowing if I was ever going to walk again. Multiple surgeries on my leg, countless hours of physical therapy and a boatload of pain brought my leg back to 95% functional. Even with the screws out, if it gets too cold or if I put too much strain on it, it still hurts like the injury was yesterday.”

He got lost enough in his own thoughts that he forgot that May was still looking for an answer to her nightmare. “But I can tell you this; part of the reason I was so adamant on getting my job back so quick is because I didn’t want to lie helpless in a bed for the rest of my life. Maybe there were a lot of things I could've done differently, but I pushed for my recovery so I wouldn't be _helpless_. I know it's not the same, but I imagine it’s the same for your dad.”

“What is?”

“Not wanting to be confined to a bed, or stuck next to an invisible evil. See, everyone has a different way of dealing, but sometimes, you just need someone to show you another option. You gave him that perspective, you inspired him to breathe life into whatever days he has and gave him the extra courage he needed to focus less on the one outcome of dying and more on the other outcome of living.”

Buck gently settled her into his side, rocking the girl back and forth. Maddie used to do this to him when they were younger, especially after a horrible nightmare. He desperately prayed it’d help May too. 

“No one comes to Earth with any guarantees. No one is told when they’re going to die or not. You’re right to be scared, but you have to know that your dad is doing his best to fight the tumor the best he can. He isn’t going cold-turkey on his treatments, just avoiding the very risky one.”

“It hasn’t gotten bigger, but it hasn’t gotten smaller either,” she murmured. “What if it never goes away? What if he dies because I told him something that made him think not having surgery was okay? What if that surgery was the key of getting him 100% better?”

Here was the root of her fear. Guilt. 

Somehow, May had pushed herself into thinking that she was holding her dad back from a potentially life-saving treatment.

“This is never going to be your fault, May. You didn’t hold a gun to his head and tell him that he wasn’t allowed to have the surgery. Michael made that decision on his own, because he wants to live his life freely. Having a major surgery can mean a lot of days in the hospital recovering, not knowing the ill-effects from the treatment. And preparing a will only means that he wants to be prepared in any outcome. You only showed him what it meant to not focus on death, and believe me, that’s more life-saving than anything medicine can do.”

May sniffled, brushing the back of her hand over her nose as she looked up at him. Buck wrinkled his nose and passed her a tissue, pulling a slight smile from her. “Really?”

“One-hundred percent. Michael loves you and Harry so much, and he’s fighting the best he can. Having you and Harry besides him makes him invincible.” 

Finally, the tension in May’s posture began to bleed out. She was finally looking more alert, and most of her anxiety looked to be gone. Of course, there was always going to be a deep-set fear and panic surrounding Michael’s diagnosis, but in this moment, she’d overcome it.

Buck noted of this with a sense of brotherly pride as he got up from his perch. “Are you feeling better?” 

“Yeah.” May sipped at her tea, now looking weary. “I’m sorry I showed up so late.”

“Hey, no.” Buck made her look at him. “You need anything, I’m there for you. You can call, show up, whatever you need. And I know the rest of the 118 feels the same way.” 

“Thank you,” she said quietly. Buck smiled and ruffled her hair before going to fetch clean sheets from the cupboard.

As he climbed the stairs, he shot a quick text to Michael, Bobby and Athena that May was with him, safe and that she had needed a little space. Athena instantly called him, probably having noticed her daughter gone in the middle of the night. 

"Buck, what in heaven's-" Buck didn't let her finish before he was cutting her off. Internally, he winced at having to cut _Athena Grant_ off of her tirade but right now, she was a worried parent, not a badass cop. In the back, he could hear Bobby's worried voice too.

"May's fine, Athena. I promise. She just needed a little space from it all, and I think she came to me because..." He didn't want to say it but he forced the words from his throat. "Because I have the most experience with near-death experiences. I can't relate to what Michael is going through at all, but I guess she saw someone who'd understand the decisions one makes when they think they're going to die."

It was silent over the phone for a moment.

"No, she came to you because she trusts you," Athena said quietly. The words meant a lot to Buck. This found family was all he had, the only thing that got him through the darker days. "I'm not mad at her or you, though we were scared out of our minds to find that she'd snuck out. I'm glad she came to you, thank you for telling me."

"Don't worry about it. I'm going to put her to bed and in the morning, I'll drive her back." 

After a million promises that she was fine and to return her back first thing in the morning, Buck went to work stripping the sheets and putting on new ones. 

As he worked, he thought about Michael. It took a lot of courage to admit that you were scared about anything, and to your own children? Buck couldn’t fathom what the Grant-Nash household was going through. 

He wasn't surprised that May had made her way over to him, but he was surprised at her showing up in-person. They were definitely close, Buck filling the older brother role for her and she filling his unspoken desire to have a sibling younger than him. It wasn’t the first time they’d talked about Michael’s diagnosis but he hadn’t seen her look so frantic. In any case, her needing to see him told volumes about how she was dealing. 

Perhaps the nightmares about her father were a recent development. Whatever it was, Buck would try to help. Starting first with calling his therapist for a recommendation for May. The girl was old enough to make her own decisions about things like therapy, and he knew that Bobby, Michael and Athena would be supportive of it. They could even do a family-type therapy to help them sort through everything they were going through.

When he returned downstairs, his call of her name died in his throat when he noticed her curled up in the middle of the couch, now fast asleep. Her mug lay empty but askew next to her and she looked to be at peace as she slept. 

Chuckling fondly, he threw a thick blanket over her and picked the mug up to deposit it in the sink. 

Hopefully with a little time, things would be okay.

They just had to put their best foot forward.

**Author's Note:**

> How was it? 
> 
> Leave me Kudos and Comments!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [zeethebooknerd](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/zeethebooknerd) or on Twitter at [tkreyesevandiaz](https://twitter.com/tkreyesevandiaz).


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